Mike Riversdale

Life was hard at the WHS Prison Complex. What with the screws stepping up the 'examination' process, the C Block incident, and the ever growing fear that you too might be chosen to lead choir practice, it was with relief when a few of us got to kick the pigskin around. 20 minutes they said, but they always made us run a full game, those sneaky bastards were betting on us.  The joke was on them, we always made sure there was pies hidden in the cafe afterwards.

If you're not at least a teeny tiny bit intrigued and would like to know what's behind the study door built into the bank, then have another coffee.

Yup, a plug!

It's nearly here .. the British & Irish Lions squad is announced tonight . All the July 2021 Lions v South African  games are listed on the comprehensive Rugby Calendar page , your free and always up to date iCal / Google Calendar for all international rugby union games. Easy to subscribe to - check out the options on the full calendar page ...

Stability . It was as easy as that, my theme for 2021 would be stability.  Not growth. Not experimentation. Not adventure. Stability. And here we are, half-way through, and so far so good. How you doing? And what was (or is about to be) your 2021 theme?

I love anything that takes longer than a standard human lifetime, trees growing, stars being born, and of course pitch dropping coz it is actually a liquid. The ninth Pitch Drop from the world's longest running lab experiment fell in April 2014. Now the watch for the tenth drop continues. Only eight or so years.

I love all the movement, and spot the people you know! The Alphero early days were very different, all power to those early pioneers , which saw them grow to these staff and friends at their 7th birthday party in June 2018 (and I'm sure it's now even grander).

As a Christmas present, or a birthday present, or maybe just because you know I'd like one.

I may have told this story, apologies if you've heard it already.  I moved away from Monmouth when I was 19 with an ever decreasing set of reasons to go back, heck I had the whole world at my fingertips even if it started just over the border in Gloucester. My first proper job, 198something, at  St Ivel in Swindon as the world slowly opened its doors to me. St Ivel, at the time, had extended it's graduate program to the likes of me. A year of learning how to "be in business", a few secondments, and quite a number of workshops away from the confines of the offices and factories. One such workshop was hosted in  Tintern .  Tintern is famous for two things, it has an Abbey that, whenever we drove passed, my Dad would point out the window and grinningly proclaim to anyone listening, "It'll be nice when it's finished!" The second famous thing is that The Poet Wordsworth spent some time wandering and pondering before writing  some evocative words  ... no

I don't use it now but for quite a while this was the basis of my work profile photo, not too shabby really 

Is this how fish watch rugby? I love this camera effect and hardly ever use it, will do from now on.

A sighting of the laser Kiwi at an All Blacks game in Wellington (June 2018).